I took a day off from the gardening, and went with a friend to see the Afghanistan exhibition at The British Museum. It is really good, and for once I wasn't rushing to catch something in its final week. This one runs until 3 July, so there's still plenty of time to go and see it. I find it a fascinating part of the world anyway, from the pages of Eric Newby, Colin Thubron, Peter Hopkirk and Frances Wood, and the plant collectors who worked in that region, so I was keen to go.The exhibition isn't large, but thoughtfully put together with some beautiful and fascinating objects. One aim is to get visitors to think about Afghanistan as a place of history and culture, and not just the site of an endless series of wars, and it certainly does that.
We watched the short introductory film, which sets the scene in terms of where the objects came from and when they were found, and the mixture of influences that worked on the region, crossed by trade routes and bordered by the Persian empire on one side, the Indian subcontinent the other, and the Steppes, and invaded at one time by Alexander the Great. Tribute is paid to the bravery and foresight of Afghan museum staff who hid and so preserved their collections as the Taliban approached. Then there are four rooms, each covering a different archeological site, with some useful explanatory maps and text plus the objects themselves. These are made of gold, stone, glass, ivory, plaster and ceramic, and include drinking vessels, bits of masonry and furniture, statues and jewellery. The gold crown that features on the front of the exhibition literature was recovered from a nomad grave, and can be disassembled into sections for ease of transport. It is decorated with many dangling discs of gold, and although protected inside a glass case is mounted in such a way that it vibrates in response to the visitors' footfall, so you see the little discs dance as they might have when it was worn, which is a very nice touch.
Although I never saw a flat-pack crown before, I'm afraid there is little new under the sun. The skull of the nomad princess in whose tomb the crown was found was slightly deformed, said to be the result of tight binding of the skull, common among high-ranking people at that time. Wouldn't she have had a constant headache? The ability of people throughout the ages to make themselves deliberately uncomfortable is quite depressing. There was also a pair of gold shoe soles, the leather shoes to which they were stitched having long since rotted away. Rubbish for walking but good for display sitting down. Shoe designer Christian Louboutin, who is currently sueing Yves Saint Laurent over breach of copyright for his trademark red soles, says that no-one before him has ever used a coloured sole to define a brand's identity. The first century AD Afghan nomads may not have called it a brand, but they knew the impact of a brightly coloured sole.
My friend introduced me to not one but two new (to me) eateries. We had coffee in the mezzanine layer of the cafe which has mysteriously appeared inside the Royal Exchange building in the eleven years since the City ceased to be my normal stamping ground. The architecture is grand, and the coffee and bun were very nice too. I think we might have been the only people there not talking shop. Almost everyone else had a laptop and folders, and I'm sure there were quite a few soundings-out about jobs going on. After looking at the Afghans, which gave us time to work off the buns, we had a curry at masala zone in Covent Garden, which is one of a small London chain. I had a vegetarian thali, and liked the indian puppets that hang all over the ceiling. I don't know if all their restaurants have puppets, but the food is jolly good, the atmosphere cheerful, and the late lunch crowd seemed to merge seamlessly with the pre-theatre crowd so we didn't feel silly ordering lunch at 3pm and sitting there chatting until after five. My friend, who has been there several times, says the food is always good, and it is very reasonable value for central London, so I'd recommend it highly. If you like curry. And do try the masala chai. It's delicious. The restrictions on cheap tickets on homewards trains were lifted for the school holidays, so we had the luxury of not having to plan the afternoon against the clock.
After that things took a turn for the worse, as the train back to Colchester was an hour late getting in (actually, I hope it was a full hour and not only 58 minutes, then I can put in a delay repay claim for half of my ticket price instead of only a quarter). As I sat down at the kitchen table to compose my considered thoughts on my grand day out, I heard creaking noises from the upstairs floorboards. As the Systems Administrator is out with former colleagues eating steak, this meant either burglars or a cat locked in the bedroom. I counted the cats and was sans Our Ginger, so ventured upstairs without taking the poker. He has eaten some more of the bedroom carpet just inside the door, and done something horrible in the middle of the duvet. Hey ho. If my syntax is more mangled and my spelling more erratic than usual, it's been a long day, and I still have to sort out the bedclothes.
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